‘New Violent Crime Tactics’ Fake Crimestoppers Message

A friend posted this recently in a Facebook group I am part of and I thought it was worth mentioning. As anyone who has undertaken any good self-protection training knows, criminals will often work with deception and distraction tactics in order to get what they want, whether that’s your money, your vehicle, your body, your life or whatever else. Deception and distraction are often the key to their successes.

This is nothing new, and I’ve heard of these tactics before, but it’s always good to keep an eye on the current trends with crime if we want to be prepared to deal with or prevent it.

Gangs are using different methods of distraction to get people out of their cars.

There is a gang initiation that has been reported by the police where a car seat is placed by the road with a fake baby in it, waiting for someone to stop and check on the ‘baby’.

The location of this seat is usually beside a wooded or grassy (field) area and the victim is dragged into the woods, beaten, robbed and/or raped. They are left for dead. It has been reported that female victims are more likely to be raped and males are more likely to be robbed.

Aside from this distraction tactic, there is another that is mentioned in this letter:

Gangs are now throwing eggs at windscreens in order to force you to stop.

This works because the windscreen wiper smears the egg across the windscreen in a wide arc and if the egg comes into contact with water they become milky and can, according to this letter, block your vision up to 92.5%. I’m not sure where they get that figure from with such accuracy (Simple milky-egg opacity test? No idea.)but we can ascertain at least that milky eggs blocking your vision at all is not good!

The advice given for both situations is simple: DON’T STOP. Don’t even slow down. If you see the baby seat by the road or if you get egged, get to safety and dial 999 as soon as possible and tell them what you’ve seen and where. Don’t get complacent with the feeling of getting away. You did, but if you don’t call then the next person might not! If you get egged, don’t use the wipers and definitely don’t use your spray. That’s what they’re counting on. If you do have to stop somewhere, of course do so safely for everyone else as well as yourself and keep your doors locked and windows closed. Pick where you stop wisely if you absolutely must stop. If you can see well enough to drive to safety safely, then do so.

This was posted to Facebook on the 11th of December 2012, and came to my attention yesterday.

Update: The Importance of Checking Information and What This Means to Us:

Now, as I’ve heard of these and similar tactics many times before, I took this seriously which is the approach I would advocate everyone take when hearing these things. Take it seriously until you hear otherwise, and then learn what you can from it. I had doubts about it, but shared it anyway for the useful information that can be taken from it regardless.

I contacted Staffordshire Police about the issue and they replied informing me that it is in fact a hoax (hence the poor grammar in the letter). According to this website:

This email did not originate with Crimestoppers, and the content of the email is false.

So now we know that the information is in fact fraudulent. However, let us not take this as an impetus to become blind to the possibility of such a thing happening, and thus place ourselves in a victim-state. If someone throwing around an email can think of it, so can a criminal! We know for a fact that distraction and deception tactics are widely used from small to large scales by criminals to victimise people, so take this as a warning and as inspiration if nothing else of something that theoretically could happen, and is theoretically possible.